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Mars may not be the geologically dead place we think it is with new evidence suggesting lava flowed relatively recently across its surface.

The flows are estimated to be so recent that geologists can't rule out Mars becoming active again one day, reports the BBC. The discovery comes only months after evidence that water may have flowed across Mars in the past several hundred years.

Dr William Hartmann from the Planetary Science Institute in Arizona and Dr Alfred McEwen from the University of Arizona estimated the age of lava flows on the slopes of an extinct volcano called Elysium Mons.

Their analysis used images from the Mars Global Surveyor, which is currently orbiting the red planet.

While the flows were estimated to be 20 million years old, this is relatively recent in geological terms. If true, it also means volcanism didn't stop in the first 2.5 billion years, as some early theories say.

The clue to the age, scientists say, is in the number of craters. The more impact craters a surface has, the longer it has been in existence.

However, they caution that measurements are so uncertain that the figure could be out by a factor of four.

"But that's still within the last few per cent of Martian history," Dr Hartmann told the BBC.